RE: My views on objective morality
February 28, 2016 at 4:14 am
(This post was last modified: February 28, 2016 at 4:17 am by Thumpalumpacus.)
(February 28, 2016 at 12:33 am)Catholic_Lady Wrote:(February 26, 2016 at 11:56 pm)Thumpalumpacus Wrote: How do you know that anything you believe about him is true? How do you know what you don't know? What in your mind tells you that what you think you know is actually true?
How do I know what I don't know? If someone asks me a question, like "why doesn't God do ______", and I don't know why, then I know that I don't know.
As for how do I know that what I believe is true, again, this is basically a "why are you Catholic" question. Not something that can ever be summed up in a forum post. The short answer is, given everything I have experienced/seen/learned in my life, the faith makes sense to me.
But how do you know that what you do believe is true, given the fact that you don't have a metric for it?
How do you know that what you think is free will is free will? How do you know that what you regard as moral behavior stems from your god? The short answer is that you don't know. You believe, you have faith, that it is; but you can't say that things like genocide aren't you god's will -- after all, he's ordered such things, if we're to believe the Bible.
If all you have to go on is faith, well then you're essentially saying that morality is subjective. Because at that point you've defined what you regard as moral, and then are saying "my god wouldn't do or order that". If your god is the author of morality, then the fact that he behaves in ways he tells us are immoral means that morality is subjective. If your god is not the author of morality, then it should be acknowledged that the acts attributed to him in your own scripture violate the moral code he is alleged to have passed down to us.
Your faith makes sense to you -- great. But the fact is that it doesn't make sense to the majority of the people in the world, and while you're here expounding it, you cannot explain why anyone else should believe as you do. How is that not, in its very essence, subjective? Can you justify your own morality in an objective manner without appealing to your own personal reasons for believing (which are entirely subjective, as you've just admitted)?
How is that not subjective morality?
(February 28, 2016 at 12:46 am)Catholic_Lady Wrote: Some things about God have been revealed to us, others have not. I believe the Church's teachings on faith and morals come from God, and those are the things we have a firm belief in. Those are the things about God that we believe have been revealed to us. The rest are unknown, and among those unknowns are some of the questions I always see here, such as "why doesn't God just personally tell us He's real" ...or something along those lines. With questions like that, all we can do is speculate and come up with theories. But at the end of the day, they are still unknown because they have not been revealed to us.
How do you know that what has been revealed is actually your god's mind, and not some human interpolation subject to the fancy, whim, and error that accompanies such an endeavor?
